Looking for assistance with today’s Connections: Sports Edition puzzle? You’re in the right place. Welcome to the Coach’s Corner for this daily word challenge — a space to collect clues, discuss patterns, and share your final scores.
Before diving in, a quick note: The full answers and category hints are listed below. If you’d like to solve the board without any cues, it’s best to play first. The game can be accessed at the usual link.
Today’s difficulty rating: 2.5 out of 5
Here are the hints for each category. Scroll down for one answer per group.
**Yellow: QUAD**
**Green: QUAKERS**
**Blue: QUICK**
**Purple: QUALITY**
Full answers for each category are provided below.
**Yellow (Easy):** Muscles, informally — AB, PEC, QUAD, TRAP
**Green (Medium):** Ivy League team nicknames — BIG GREEN, CRIMSON, LIONS, QUAKERS
**Blue (Challenging):** Jonathans — KUMINGA, QUICK, TAYLOR, VILMA
**Purple (Tricky):** ____ start — FALSE, KICK, QUALITY, SPOT
**What is Connections: Sports Edition?**
It’s The Athletic’s original daily puzzle where players hunt for connections among 16 words. The goal is to group them into four sets of four, each sharing a common theme, without making more than four mistakes. Each puzzle has only one solution, so watch for words that might fit multiple categories. Categories range from straightforward (yellow) to medium (green) to challenging (blue) to tricky (purple). The puzzle creator is Mark Cooper, a managing editor for college sports at The Athletic. A new puzzle goes live at midnight in your time zone. Thanks for playing, and feel free to share your scores in the comments!
